Snapchat removes ‘Best Friends’ feature only to be Reinstated

Snapchat investors got cold feet after the company updated its mobile platform, and disabling the “best friends” feature, which allows other users to see who is frequently contacted by that person.

Snapchat users and investors collectively freaked out when the messaging, and photo sharing app decided to pull its “best friends” feature, which showed the most frequently contacted individuals. The update though didn’t just bring a change on that front – the company also launched a service within the service called “Discover” which allows users to see curated content from a number of sources including CNN, ESPN, and Cosmo. Even with all of the positive benefits of the update though, everyone’s attention was focused on the removal of the “Best Friends,” feature.

Particularly, the individuals who were most-vocal about the update and how disgusted they were – happened to be teenagers. While that made many curious about the fundamental future of Snapchat – it was clear that the company was not going to leave the “Best Friends” feature out for long – when CEO and Founder of Snapchat Evan Spiegel took to Twitter to update users of Snapchat that the feature would soon be returned.

However, he pointed out that there was a need for hiding some higher-profile friends of the network, so this is definitely something that should be looked at moving forward. Once restored, the focus can again go on the great features that the app and service will be delivering from start-to-finish. The discover portion, combined with the increased functionality, and streamlined UI all create a really great messaging and photo sharing service.

It should be pointed out though that this could have some long-term impacts for the service. While no one is challenging – at least legitimately – the service itself with a competing service, the company still could scare off some more “adult” users of the service, if they do continue to fully-cater to their teen-centric user base. Teenagers might have erupted with rage over the fact that they would no longer be able to secretly stalk their partners or friends, but clearly Snapchat is working to really evolve itself as a product – and cement itself in technological history. The effectiveness of their updates moving forward – like giving users an option to have best friends displayed – might actually be something that the company finally employs.